CITY OF MALOLOS — “You’re a coward, Judge! You’re a big coward! You’ll carry this in your conscience!” Jovito Palparan Jr. yelled at the judge as justice caught up with him on Monday morning.
Judge Alexander Tamayo of the Bulacan Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 15 warned him of contempt.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, we’re going to prison anyway!” Palparan retorted.
He turned on Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Juan Pedro Navera and roared: “You’re so stupid!”
Navera shrugged.
“We are used to accused abusing us verbally. As prosecutors, we are not popular with convicts,” he said.
Reclusion perpetua
Tamayo sentenced former Army Major General Palparan, called “The Butcher” by human rights activists, former Army Lt. Col. Felipe Anotado Jr. and former Army S/Sgt. Edgardo Osorio to reclusion perpetua — 20 years and one day to 40 years in prison — for the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of University of the Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan in 2006.
The judge also ordered the three to pay the victims’ families P100,000 in civil indemnity and P200,000 in moral damages for each count, and their transfer to New Bilibid Prison, the national penitentiary, in Muntinlupa City.
The court issued a warrant for the arrest of another accused, Army M/Sgt. Rizal Hilario, who remains at large.
Palparan said he and his codefendants would challenge the decision in the Court of Appeals.
‘We are not guilty’
Before the promulgation, he told the Inquirer that he was at peace.
“After this, we walk as free men. We are not guilty,” Palparan said. “What evidence have they shown that would keep us in jail? We have lost seven years of our lives.”
But when the decision came down, it was Erlinda Cadapan, the mother of Sherlyn, and Concepcion Empeño, the mother of Karen, who wept for joy.
“We waited for this for more than a decade. We are joyful and thankful for the fair decision rendered by the judge,” Empeño said after leaving the court.
“This battle is not yet over. I want to skin [him] alive,” Cadapan said, blaming Palparan for the killings of activists wherever he was assigned.
“Our victory is not yet complete. We want to embrace the warm bodies of our daughters. They (the military) should return all the missing people they abducted because their families are anxiously waiting for them,” she said.
Cadapan traveled from Laguna early on Monday to attend the promulgation. She said her daughter would have been 42 today.
Later, in a phone interview, Cadapan said that now that Palparan had been convicted, it was time the troops who had served under him speak up.
“[To] the soldiers who may know something, tell us what really happened to our daughters,” she said.
‘Macabre silence’
The promulgation took no more than 10 minutes.
“Crucial in determining the culpability and conspiratorial liability of General Palparan is the unassailable fact that he knew all too well of the forcible abduction and detention of Karen and Sherlyn by those under his command, as he had seen these two women at Camp Tecson but he not only acquiesced to their unlawful captivity but also gave his imprimatur to their inhumane treatment at the hands of his men, and, in effect, fomented the same by not lifting a finger to halt the abuses against them,” Judge Tamayo said in his decision.
“Clearly, he (Palparan) was one . . . in the desire to stamp out the enemies of the state, like Karen and Sherlyn, who they believed deserved to be erased from the face of the earth at any cost,” he added.
“Karen and Sherlyn, in fact, have not been seen again, despite the many years of continuing search for them. His silence and inaction were the signals of approval for his men to commit atrocities against these hapless women.”
Tamayo said it was through his “macabre silence” that Palparan “loudly expressed his assent to, approval of and community of purpose in the crimes that he became a coconspirator of in these cases.”
Palparan is currently detained at Fort Bonifacio’s Army Custodial Center in Taguig City for his alleged role in the abduction and illegal detention of the two student activists.
His lawyer, Arturo Cabides, asked the court to allow him to stay in military jail because he still had to be tried on kidnapping and serious physical injury charges brought by two farmers in 2006.
Unidentified men seized Empeño and Cadapan from a house at Barangay San Miguel, Hagonoy town, Bulacan, on June 26, 2006.
Empeño, who was 22 at the time, and Cadapan, who was then 29 and reportedly pregnant, were never seen again.
Leftist groups tagged Palparan, then commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, as responsible for the disappearance of the two students, whom the military had described as sympathizers of the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Palparan was commander of the Army’s 204th Brigade on Mindoro Island in the early 2000s, serving on the counterinsurgency program of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Political killings
Activists in Southern Tagalog also blamed a spate of political killings in the region on Palparan’s command.
Among those killed in 2003 were Karapatan regional coordinator Eden Marcellana and activist Eddie Gumanoy.
A year earlier, activist couple Expedito and Manuela Albarillo were killed, allegedly by troops from Palparan’s command.
Palparan went into hiding after the Bulacan RTC issued a warrant for his arrest.
He was arrested in a house above a bakery in Santa Mesa, Manila, in 2014.
He was initially detained at the Bulacan provincial jail but due to concerns about his security, the court allowed his transfer to Fort Bonifacio. —With a report from Darryl John Esguerra